18 September 2016 1:25 AM

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column

So, Mr Slippery has finally slipped away, just before he was found out. I wish David Cameron lots of money in his future life, so much of it that he at last begins to wonder if that is what he really wanted.

But can we pause for a moment and ask how it was that this charming but pointless person rose to such prominence in our country?

His single most important action was to lend Western air forces and other assistance to Islamist fanatics in Libya. Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee last week explained just how clueless and irresponsible this was, though it is a pity that so many of the MPs on this committee supported the Libya folly at the time.

The same goes for much of the media, which reported the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi more or less as if it was a sporting event, and the fanatical rebels were our team. They also gullibly repeated the most ridiculous atrocity propaganda, something any knowledgeable journalist is trained to treat with suspicion.

I have checked my own writing and broadcasting at the time and find I warned clearly against it, for example this from March 2011: 'Who are the Libyan rebels? What do they want? Why do we love them so? I've no idea, and nor has Mr Cameron… Some of the longest wars in history started with small-scale intervention, for a purpose that looked good and achievable, and ended up ruining millions of lives.

'The Soviet takeover of Afghanistan in 1979 ended with countless innocents driven into refugee camps, and the collapse of the Soviet state itself. It also left Afghanistan as a worse snake pit than before.'

I did not know the half of it. David Cameron's war created the appalling, unstoppable crisis of mass migration across the Mediterranean from Africa, a gigantic movement of people unknown in previous history, which will in the long run transform the economic and political fortunes of our continent.

This catastrophe was his most notable act. He ought to be remembered for it. Many of you will be able to think of others, some deliberate (such as his daft energy, education, migration, economic and aid policies), others exploding cigars, such as his incompetent and contemptuous handling of the European Union issue.

He was one of the worst prime ministers we have ever had, but have we – have you – learned from this experience? Will you continue to turn to the smooth, the well-spun, the expensively suited and rehearsed, the ones endorsed by the same media who gushed over the Blair creature?

Already the forces that put David Cameron in power are uniting in a dishonest spasm of hatred against Theresa May's grammar school policy and the referendum result.

Will you be fooled by them again? Or will you learn that there is no such thing as 'the centre' and that those who claim to stand there are driven by nothing but personal ambition and vanity? And that they do not offer safety, but danger?

*****

Late last year a strange new law came into force in this country, making it a crime, punishable by prison, to use repeated ‘controlling or coercive behaviour’ in the home.

You might think there’s nothing wrong with that.

But what if it becomes one of the many offences in family law where social workers, police and courts assume that the accused is guilty, and he or she has to prove his innocence?

The growing numbers who have fallen into this pit simply do not get fair trials. No doubt some of them are guilty. But in many cases this simply is not proved beyond reasonable doubt. They lose homes, families, children, livelihoods, reputations and – sometimes – liberty.

And if we stop caring if they’ve been properly tried, we forge a weapon that may one day be used against us.

That’s why I really dislike the great fuss recently made about the BBC Radio 4 soap opera ‘The Archers’.

In this programme - which I have many times explained is openly intended as propaganda for ‘progressive’ ideas - two actors pretended to be a married couple. This long drama got under way as the new law came into force.

For months, the male actor pretended to be a perfect example of the ‘coercive control’ which extreme feminists claim is so common. Again and again he bullied and belittled the female actor, as if he were a Victorian squire who had her imprisoned in a cottage miles from civilization.

She submitted to it meekly for months in a way I doubt any modern woman would do for more than about five minutes. Then, in a bizarre and incredible scene, the male actor pretended to goad the female actor into pretending to stab him.

There was then a pretend arrest, and a pretend trial. There was even a pretend jury, made up of celebrity actors. And the nation was supposed to be terribly engaged, anxiously hoping that the fictional jury would pretend to acquit the female actor, so she could pretend to go back to her fictional home.

This rubbish had two propaganda aims. The first was to make more people willing to believe that this kind of thing is common, when we have no way of knowing.

The second was to give the audience information it never normally has, in any proper courtroom drama. Listeners thought they already ‘knew’ what had ‘really happened’. They ‘knew’ the male actor was ‘guilty’. Actually, they didn’t. They just knew what the scriptwriters had decided to portray, a fictional wicked man, fictionally coercing and controlling, and fictionally trying to get away with it.

But in any real trial on this charge, without solid evidence, and where the only two witnesses disagree, I am sure that some real jurors’ minds will be influenced, by this programme, towards convicting. As a result, an innocent defendant might go to prison for years. I think the BBC has done a wrong and shameful thing.

******

The story of the Prague assassination of the SS monster Reinhard Heydrich is a thrilling and bitter one, and has now been made into a major film, for the second time, or perhaps the fourth, if you count 'Hangmen also Die' and the Czech film 'Atentat' The new version ‘Anthropoid’, which stars Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan, gets closer than before to the savage horror of the Nazi reprisals, and made me wonder, yet again, if this sort of assassination was justified.

The evil of the Third Reich continued all too efficiently without Heydrich. But the torture and collective punishment visited on the Czechs (whose subjugation we couldn’t and didn’t prevent) were frightful. Was any good really achieved? I grow less sure year by year.

**********

Why do suckers always fall for the claims of ‘medical cannabis’? Its advocates are invariably mixed up with the lobby for general legalisation. America’s leading campaigner for legal dope, Keith Stroup, said in a candid moment in 1979 that he was using medical cannabis as ‘a red herring to give marijuana a good name.’ Cannabis may make some people feel better, but so did Thalidomide. A drug correlated with severe mental illness may just not be the ideal miracle cure.

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08 January 2014 2:04 PM

As my opponents the Big Dope campaign win more and more of their battles, they may at last meet some scepticism and hostility from the herbivorous Left who have up till now wrongly seen this campaign as ‘progressive’.

I have always thought so, and have often felt that my description of the campaign as ‘Big Dope’, and my comparison of this well-funded campaign with the big burger and soft drinks companies, helped David Raynes and me to win the debate on the subject at Exeter University in December 2012.

Here’s an interesting foretaste of what may be to come, a ‘Guardian’ article which makes many of the points I have long sought to make about this deeply unwise campaign:

But note the reference to non-commercial lobbyists such as George Soros. He doesn’t need money, nor does he stand to make any. What, then, is his motive for supporting this huge social revolution in formerly Christian and even Puritan lands?

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13 July 2011 3:15 PM

A week ago I wrote these words , as a comment on the thread’ Prohibition Blues’

‘The 'medical cannabis' nonsense, as Keith Stroup memorably told the 'Emory Wheel' ( An American university newspaper) on February 6th 1979 (pp 18-19, I have a copy in front of me as I write in case anyone is tempted to deny this), is a conscious red herring. No serious drug could be administered in the forms in which cannabis is taken by those who use it for pleasure. There are, on both sides of the Atlantic, drugs made from THC (but which do not provide a high) They are rarely prescribed because they simply aren't very effective. (Nabilone is the main one in Britain). Here's the quotation from the Stroup interview (plainly conducted by sympathisers with Mr Stroup) : In reply to the question: 'How is NORML utilizing the issue of marijuana treatment of chemotherapy patients? Stroup replied: "We are trying to get marijuana reclassified medically. If we do that (we'll do it in at least 20 states this year for chemotherapy patients) will be using the issue as a red herring to give marijuana a good name.That's our way of getting to them (new right) indirectly, just like the paraphernalia laws are their way at getting to us". Alert readers will notice that after 'patients)' there appears to be a missing word. That's not my omission, but how it is in the original I have before me. But I cannot think of any word apart from 'we' which could or would fill the gap’.

What am I saying here? I am saying that claims for the medicinal properties of cannabis are propaganda, designed to be part of the relentless public relations campaign for this particular drug, and that one of the longest-standing campaigners for cannabis legalisation once, in an unguarded moment, said so. I repeat, no serious medicinal drug could be smoked or eaten in cookies, not least because the dose could not be properly regulated. I repeat that drugs based on the principal active ingredient of cannabis, such as Nabilone, are available.

One person responded to this by complaining that the words were said a long time ago. So what? Unguarded quotations of this kind are wonderfully rare, and are often treasured for many years. I went to some lengths to check the quotation (accurately given above) because it had come to my notice that its validity was being denied (notably in a letter apparently written by Mr Stroup to a Steve Kubby. I am sure most search engines will find it). I contacted the current editorial staff of the ‘Emory Wheel’ (newspaper of Emory University in Georgia, USA), but they were unable to help. Eventually, diligent and helpful staff at the Emory University library were able to find the original for me. Mr Stroup is the undoubted star of the issue. appearing twice. The quotation is to be found in an interview by the paper’s ‘entertainment staff’, who appear from their questioning to have been highly sympathetic to Mr Stroup.

I think this is most interesting, and should give pause to any serious persons in the pro-cannabis lobby.

If it did, they haven’t shared this with me. What I did receive was a response from a contributor who has used several names but currently trades under the title ‘Fred F’.

He wrote (amongst other things) :

‘I see you're up to your old reality denying tricks again Pete. You're now claiming medical cannabis is a myth are you? ‘

When I took exception to this, and required an apology and retraction, he first of all claimed not to understand my objection to the term ‘reality denying’. This phrase contrives to suggest that I am either removed from reality and/or have committed a falsehood. In either case it is a substantial insult. By connotation with the phrase ‘Holocaust Denial’ which is the origin of this modern cliché, it is also an implied smear. ( see also the very common parallel smear ‘climate change denier’)

Further *I* had not *claimed* that medicinal cannabis is a *myth*. I had *said* (indeed established incontrovertibly, beyond a shadow of a doubt) that *Keith Stroup*, a prominent campaigner for legalisation, had described it as a *red herring*. And I had pointed out that, where THC has been used under medical rules, it has not been a wild success.

Mr ‘F’ has since responded with this contribution: ‘Ok Peter I withdraw my claim that you think medicinal cannabis is a myth and I apologise for any upset I have caused. I reiterate that I do not consider you to be a liar. I was also absolutely stunned by your suggestion that I'm somehow trying to smear you in some way as having Nazi sympathies. I state categorically that I was not and I find that a really strange thing for you to have said. I'm afraid I do find some of your opinions and views simply delusional and I can't really hide that can I? But if one is deluded they believe their delusions and thus it is not the same as lying. I sincerely hope you accept my apology. I might add that it is not actually possible to ban anyone on this blog for technical reasons - you may be able to ban an individual IP address but they are easy to find. Remember Harry Rose? Do you think you banned him? And what about the landfill bloke - didn't you try to threaten an apology out of him too?’

This is not adequate. It accuses me of being deluded (though without evidence to support the accusation), and redoubles the insult. I suppose it is possible that Mr ‘F’ ( who hides behind his latest pseudonym as he writes this stuff) really doesn’t know the connotations of the expression ‘denier’. But it seems unlikely to me. In fact it more or less guarantees that Mr ‘F’ will not be welcome here after the weekend,

Mr ‘F’ is not asked to apologise ‘for any upset he has caused’. That is what I call a railway apology, under which the problem is not the railway company’s failure to run a train, but the inexplicable (inexplicable, anyway, to the railway company) anger and impatience of the passenger that the train has failed to run, or been seriously delayed. In any case, I am not ‘upset’. I have as I often point out here, been insulted by experts, and Mr ‘F’ isn’t one. I am simply resolute.

I enforce a straightforward rule here that if people make serious allegations about me ( or anyone else) they must either justify them or withdraw and apologise for making them, within a set time.

I’ve explained to Mr ‘F’ that he committed two substantive offences. One, he accused me of ‘reality denial’, i.e. dishonesty, an offence he multiplied by suggesting that this is a regular habit of mine.2. He accused *me* of saying I had made a claim (which I had not) thus misrepresenting an important factual statement, that *Keith Stroup* had *said* that medicinal cannabis was a red herring to get pot a good name.

Mr ‘F’ has repeatedly mischievously twisted this issue into a non-existent quarrel over whether I said that medicinal cannabis was a myth. As he well knows, this was not my argument, and never has been. He doesn’t need to tell me I never said this. I know that. I think, as it happens, the concept of ‘medicinal cannabis’ is much worse than a myth, I think it is wicked propaganda. Alas, it cannot accurately be called a ‘myth’ because of various not-very-successful attempts (Sativex, Nabilone etc) to use THC, in properly controlled ( and therefore high-free) doses in a medical fashion. These are in any case marginal to the real ‘medical marijuana’ propaganda effort, which has succeeded in effectively legalising cannabis in several US jurisdictions.

Mr ‘F’ , whose wording appears to be designed to trap me into a statement on ‘medicinal cannabis’ that I have not made, based on an opinion I do not have, needs to grasp that I am not denying having said something I patently never said, and I don‘t want his acknowledgement that I never said it. What I want is his truthful acknowledgement of what I did say – and that he very much doesn’t like, and very much wishes not to acknowledge because it is true and inconvenient to his settled opinion - that *Keith Stroup* of *NORML* said it was a *red herring*.

I note his threat to continue posting under other identities. I am of course aware that people do this. We have quite a lot of fun here making it hard for them to do so, though of course we sometimes fail. I am mainly anxious to make the point that accusations of dishonesty must be substantiated or apologised for unconditionally, and unconditionally withdrawn. The response of Mr ’F’ comes nowhere near this in content or spirit. He still has a few days to put this right.